Masters Mystery Miler

At 62, Ronville Gravesande trains to break 5:00 for the mile - and challenge a legend

Ronville Gravesande is running the hilly, rubberized 2-mile walking trail at Weequahic Park in Newark, N.J., on a Sunday morning. Once the site of an old horse racing track, the 311-acre park is now an urban oasis. The trail, recently refurbished, is stunning. It has the springy surface of a regulation track and steep hills.

“This is where I’ll do my training for Fifth Avenue,” says Gravesande, who lives nearby in Union. Gravesande, 62, a native of Guyana who immigrated to the U.S. in 1981, will be seeking his third straight Fifth Avenue Mile title on Sept. 22 in the 60–64 age bracket. Gravesande won the 2010 event in a brisk 5:08 and repeated the victory in 2011, in 5:09. Both years, he ran away from three-time 60–64 champion and long-time masters star Harry Nolan, also of New Jersey, who ran 5:20 and 5:28, respectively.

When the 2010 race started and Gravesande took off, Nolan, now 65, had no idea who he was. “I thought I would reel him in,” Nolan recalls. “But when he started to extend his lead, I said, ‘Whoa.’ I just couldn’t catch him.”

At the time, Gravesande didn’t know who Nolan was either. “Nobody from the race spoke to me,” he said. Perhaps the opposition was too stunned. “We were all walking around saying, ‘Who is this guy?’” says Nolan.

The next year, in 2011, Gravesande, who’d been running road races with good but not great results, was still little-known, and Nolan marshaled some false hopes that in a year’s time Gravesande had lost a few steps. Left again to gasp from behind, Nolan sized up Gravesande this way: “He’s a raw talent. I think he has a lot of strength. I’m not sure how much speed he has.”

Gravesande is not sure either. He did win a few sprints when he started competing in 2004 after doing some running here and there for 20 years. But his running has been all over the map since, and with a seat-of-the-pants training program that has him doing 75 miles a week, much of it at 4 o’clock on the morning, Gravesande’s erratic success generates more questions than answers.

How “raw” a talent is he? Can a 62-year-old man be a diamond in the rough like some teenager?

A Rivalry in the Making

Gravesande not only hopes to notch a third straight title on Fifth Avenue, he hopes to shatter 5 minutes and go on to challenge the great Nolan Shaheed for national and world 60-plus supremacy. Shaheed, also 62, has owned the 60s division and so far this year has added a world indoor 60–64 indoor mile record, 4:50.95, and a U.S. outdoor 3,000m record, 9:47.76.

Gravesande was less of a Fifth Avenue mystery man when he ran the 1500m and 3,000m at the New Jersey state indoor masters meet in Toms River last February. On cruise control, he just about lapped the 3,000m field, running 11:03.77. Less than two hours later, he spun a 5:10.26 1500 victory, winning by 12 seconds. Many 60-plus peers met Gravesande for the first time. They were intrigued by his “What, me worry?” personality and lighter-than-air stride. While opponents strained to hold a fast pace, Gravesande seemed to float around the track, barely touching the ground.

In March, Gravesande went to the masters indoor nationals in Bloomington, Ind., to race Shaheed. Normally a light, fussy eater, Gravesande filled up on pancakes the morning of the 3,000m. In the race, he shot out to a big lead with a 5:20 first mile, only to take ill, almost drop out and finish far back in fourth. Shaheed won by 97 seconds in a U.S. indoor record, 9:48.84. The next day, Gravesande won the mile in 5:29.21. Shaheed didn’t run.

After indoor nationals, Gravesande resumed big mileage to prepare for the Boston Marathon. He’d run seven marathons, with a 3:12:13 PR from Philadelphia the previous November — his third marathon in two months after Toronto and New York — and he was still experimenting with fluid intake during the races.

For Boston, he was gunning for 2:50 and, as he put it, “upped my game.” One Saturday, amid howling winds, he did a hilly 14-miler at 7-minute pace with the ninth mile in 5:58. Another day, he did a full 26-miler in 3:20, then spent the afternoon tiling his bathroom. Gravesande felt fit enough to achieve his goal, until the Boston weather report. In the searing heat, he wound up jogging the second half en route to a 4:06.Training in the Dark

This year will be different. Fixed on the mile, and sub-5:00, he has vowed to do what any coach would recommend: reduce mileage, add repeat work, find training partners, take an occasional day off. At the end of August, Gravesande ran a 5:20 mile in an all-comers track meet as a final tune-up for Fifth Avenue.

In Union, Gravesande trains at 4 a.m., before going to work in New York as a budget manager for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. He does at least 10 miles at close to 6-minute pace, surging the hills, in darkness. At that hour, he has the roads to himself, a whispery 5’6”, 114-pounder, moving like a shadow in the night.

The work ethic goes back decades. Gravesande had grown up about 25 miles from the Guyana capital, Georgetown, not far from the infamous Jonestown massacre in which, three years earlier, a cult figure, James Jones, caused the deaths of more than 900 people.

Gravesande was one of eight siblings. His father died when he was 9. His mother worked in the coconut industry. “Sometimes you’d run home from school and not know if you’d have lunch,” he said. Before long, he’d help his mother on the job. Young Gravesande still had the energy to race a three-miler with friends almost every morning before school. No training, just running. Guess who won them all?

After high school, Ron worked as a teacher’s aide, then as a police officer doing paper work, then with a relative in the gold and diamond business. He got married at 20 to Megan and with their savings and a proud self-sufficiency, they came to America.

Once in the States, they settled in Brooklyn. Gravesande attended a community college and got an associate degree. Then he moved his wife and three children to Pennsylvania for the open space and so he could attend elite Bucknell University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in business management in 1995. By 2000, he was back in the New York area, in Union, and he proceeded to earn a master’s degree from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Scratching the Itch

With advanced degrees and an eloquent manner, you would think Gravesande would have the fundamentals of running figured out. But take his diet: healthy but spare. After getting up at 3:30 in the morning (he goes to bed at 8), and running 10 miles and up, he has coffee and one slice of whole wheat bread with peanut butter for breakfast. At work, he has a banana and some nuts. Lunch, his main meal, is salad, rice and vegetables. Later, a candy bar snack and, once home, yogurt. Dinner? A glass of milk and half a bagel with peanut butter.

That’s some training table for a man running over 70 miles a week. “I’m fine,” says Gravesande. “Lunch carries me.”

In Weequahic Park, Gravesande cannot resist charging every hill. Charge, relax; charge, relax. Gravesande is like a youngster who cannot sit still. He’s always darting, moving. How remarkable that he can manage a desk job. At home he jumps rope to reggae and soca music. He flutters about, taking over any space he occupies. He’s got an itch — the Shaheed itch. Shaheed’s the man. And Gravesande yearns for a rematch.

Because it’s unlikely that Shaheed will turn up at Fifth Avenue, Gravesande’s next chance to race him may not come till the 2013 indoor track season, either in January at the Hartshorne masters mile in Ithaca, New York (where Shaheed set his world 60-64 indoor record), or in March at the masters indoor nationals in Landover, Maryland.

But he’s not getting any younger. Will his raw talent continue to carry him?

“I’ve never really trained for Fifth Avenue,” said Gravesande.

It’s time for the mystery man to nail a fast one. “Day clean,” as they say in Guyana. The sun is up, it’s a new day.